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Bert Morgan photographic negatives

Call Number

PR 367

Date

circa 1932-1963, 1981 (bulk, 1960-1961)

Creator

Morgan, Bert, 1904-1986
Morgan, Richard, 1936-2012

Extent

3.41 Linear feet (approximately 801 negatives and 18 glass plates in 4 boxes)

Language of Materials

English .

Abstract

Approximately 819 black-and-white photographic negatives (18 of which are glass plates) by celebrity and society photographer Bert Morgan (1904–1986) and his son/assistant, Richard Morgan (1936–2012), documenting charity balls, weddings, the annual dog show of the Westminster Kennel Club, and the opening of the National Horse Show, at Manhattan venues such as the Waldorf-Astoria, Madison Square Garden, and Lüchow's restaurant.

Biographical Note

By most accounts Bert Morgan (1904–1986) was the dean of society photographers. Between the 1930s and 1980s, wherever the wealthy and notable gathered—New York, Southampton, Newport, or Palm Beach—Morgan was there to photograph them at charity balls, banquets, horse shows, and weddings.

Born Bernard Stanley Morgan in England in 1904, "Bert" emigrated with his family to the United States in 1911 and settled in Brooklyn, New York. With a seven-dollar pawn shop camera he began working as a syndicate news photographer in 1919. For a decade Morgan supplied northeastern papers like the New York Daily News with images of the common man. In 1930 he became the official photographer for the Social Spectator. The paper sent Morgan to Palm Springs that winter to capture New York celebrities at play, launching his fifty-year career of documenting their progress from the "Four Hundred" to "Café Society" to the "Jet Set." His son, Richard Morgan (1936–2012), also a photographer, eventually assisted.

Morgan's modus operandi was to position his camera and tripod at some heavily-trafficked hotspot, be it nightclub or racetrack (he was the official photographer for the New York Racing Association) to shoot luminaries as they went by. His gentlemanly demeanor and encyclopedic memory endeared him to his subjects: he could identify thousands of them by name and residence simply by looking at their pictures. At his death Morgan left 1.5-million negatives. Some 500,000 of them make up the Bert Morgan Archive, administered by Archive Farms, Inc.

[This note is drawn from Morgan's obituary in the Palm Beach Daily News, Sunday 21 September 1986, and from information in South Hampton Blue Book 1930 to 1960: Photographs by Bert Morgan (Shelter Island, N.Y.: Archive Farms, Inc., 2014).]

Arrangement

The collection is housed in four boxes. Boxes 1-3 hold dated negatives in chronological order, with undated negatives at the end. Due to the possible combustibility of some of these negatives, boxes 1-3 are kept in cold storage. Requests for this portion of the collection must allow at least two full days for it to thaw.

Box 4 holds 18 glass plate negatives. These must not be removed from their four-flap protective enclosures. To view a plate, place it flat on the surface of a lightbox and open its enclosure.

Scope and Contents

The collection contains approximately 563 sleeves, each holding one or more 4-by-5-inch black-and-white photographic negatives, for an approximate total of 801. A handful of strip film negatives are in color (see the envelope in the back of box 3). And eighteen are 4-by-5-inch glass plate, black-and-white negatives (see box 4).

Each sleeve (or envelope) carries typed or handwritten information supplied by the photographer, usually the event, the location, the date, and the names of his subjects. A very few sleeves hold prints of negatives, and some include typed captions, business cards, and the occasional newsclipping.

Although Bert Morgan photographed celebrities and socialites at their far-flung haunts, the venues in the current collection are limited to locations in Manhattan: the ballrooms of the Americana, Astor, Plaza, Sheraton-East, and Waldorf-Astoria hotels; the churches of St. Bartholomew, St. Ignatius Loyola, and Fifth Avenue Presbyterian; famous eateries like Lüchow's and the Four Seasons; Madison Square Garden; the Museum of the City of New York; and Bloomingdale's department store.

A majority of the events depicted were charity balls. Besides raising money for some worthy cause, the gatherings provided luminaries with a platform to be seen—and photographed. Morgan's record of his subjects on his negative sleeves (see the container list) reads like a "Who's Who" of late 1950s- early 1960s society, and includes actresses (Eva Gabor), designers (Oleg Cassini), diplomats (Porfirio Rubirosa), foreign dignitaries (Pratap Singh Rao Gaekwad, Maharajah of Baroda), minor royalty (Princess Stephanie of Windisch-Graetz), and the fabulously wealthy (Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney). As many of these charity balls took place during the early 1960s, it is not surprising that "the Twist" makes several appearances in the collection. Morgan notes several couples "doing the Twist." The dance craze was so widespread that at least one fundraiser at the staid Four Seasons was billed as a "twist party" (see box 3, folder 2).

Earlier in his career Morgan documented the dog shows of the Westminster Kennel Club at Madison Square Garden (see box 1, folders 4, 5, and 12), and the annual openings of the National Horse Show (box 1, folder 8; box 2, folder 5; box 3, folder 1), considered to be the start of the social calendar.

Conditions Governing Access

Open to qualified researchers.

Due to the possible combustibility of some of the negatives in boxes 1-3, that portion of the collection is kept in cold storage. Requests to view boxes 1-3 must allow at least two full days for them to thaw.

The 18 glass plate negatives in the collection must not be removed from their four-flap protective enclosures. To view a plate, place it flat on the surface of a lightbox and open its enclosure.

Conditions Governing Use

Permission to reproduce any Print Room holdings through publication must be obtained from: Rights and Reproductions, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024. Phone: (212) 873-3400 ext. 270. Fax: (212) 579-8794.

Preferred Citation

This collection should be cited as the Bert Morgan Photographic Negatives, PR 367, Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections, The New-York Historical Society.

CREDIT LINE: Bert Morgan Archive.

Location of Materials

Due to the possible combustibility of some of the negatives in boxes 1-3, that portion of the collection is kept in cold storage. Requests to view boxes 1-3 must allow at least two full days for them to thaw.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of Patrick Montgomery, May 2017.

Collection processed by

Joseph Ditta

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-21 15:47:11 -0400.
Using Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language: English

Processing Information

Archivist Joseph Ditta processed this collection in June-July 2018.

Repository

New-York Historical Society
New-York Historical Society
170 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024